Allas, myn hertës queen n! Allas, my wyf! Myn hertës lady, ender of my lyf! What is this world? What asken men to have? Farwel, my swete! farwel, myn Emelye! * * * * * Forget not Palamon, that gentil man!” His laste word was, "Mercy, Emelye!" 9. Of the Prose of the fourteenth century, a very short specimen will suffice. It, too, will be furnished by the Canterbury Tales. It is the beginning of the Tale of Melibeus, describing the injury which the principal character in the narrative was tempted to avenge. 66 A yong man called Melibeus, mighty and riche, and his wif that called was Prudens, had a doughter which that called was Sophie. Upon a day byfel, that for his desport he is went into the feldes him to play. His wif, and his doughter eek, hath he laft within his hous. Thre of his olde foos' han' it espyed, and setten laddres to the walles of his hous; and by the wyndowes ben entred, and betyn3 his wif, and woundid his doughter with fyve mortal woundes, in fyve sondry places; that is to sayn, in here feet, in here hondes, in here eeres, in here nose, and in here mouth; and lafte her for deed, and went away. "Whan Melibeus retourned was into his hous, and seigh' al this meschief, he, lik a man mad, rendyng his clothes, gan wepe and crie. Prudens his wyf, as ferforth as sche dorste, bysought him of his wepyng to stynte. But not forthi he gan to crie ever lenger the more. 4 Saw. So far forth as; a phrase retained in the language, though unusual. Not therefore, nevertheless. "This noble wif Prudens suffred hir housbonde for to wepe and crie, as for a certeyn space: and, whan she seigh hir tyme sche sayd him in this wise: 'Allas, my lord!' quod sche, 'why make ye youre self for to be lik a fool? Forsothe it apperteyneth not to a wys man, to make such sorwe.' 10. The poet Lydgate may represent for us the language written in the first half of the fifteenth century. Yet, admiringly studious of Chaucer, he is in style a little more antique than he should be. His story of "The Churl and the Bird" is imitated (he himself says, rather too modestly, that it is translated) from a favourite French fabliau. It is a moral apologue. A churl or peasant catches a bird, which speaks to him, and implores freedom, promising him, in return, three golden precepts of wisdom. Released accordingly, she flies to her tree, and thence delivers the three lessons: first, that he should not be easy of belief in idle tales; secondly, that he should never desire things impossible; thirdly, that he should never grieve immoderately for that which is irrecoverably lost. Then, singing and rejoicing, the bird taunts the man. She tells him that, in letting her escape, he had lost wealth which might have ransomed a mighty king; for that there is in her body a magical stone, weighing an ounce, which makes its possessor to be always victorious, rich, and beloved. The churl laments loudly. The bird, on this, reminds him of the three precepts, and says he has already disobeyed them all. In the first place, he had believed her story about the precious stone, which he might have known to be a downright fib, if he had had wit enough to recollect, that she had described it as weighing an ounce, which was evidently more than the weight of her whole body. It is plain how he had broken the second and third rules, although the stone had really existed. Nor need we follow the poet in his anxious deduction of the moral: it consists in the three lessons themselves. The following stanzas are somewhat lame in prosody, as is usual with Lydgate. They describe the garden, and the bird singing in it.* 2 Alle the aleis1 were made playne with sond, For to, before infinitive: long retained; still used vulgarly. Turfs, turves. *Text from Halliwell's "Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate; (Percy Society;) 1840. Sote herbers, withe condite at the honde, Rounde as byralle ther beamys out shynynge. Theron a bird, syngyng bothe day and nyghte, Esperus1 enforced hir coráge, Toward evyn, whan Phebus gan to west, To syng hir complyn1 and than go to rest : To synge agayne, as was hir due, It was a verray hevenly melodye, Evyne and morowe to here the byrddis song, Of uncouthe1 varblys1 and tunys drawen on longe, Til on a morwe, whan Tytan20 shone ful clere, The birdd was trapped and kaute" with a pantére.22 11. The manner in which English was written during the latter half of the fifteenth century has been examined by a very skilful analyst; and his account of it we may profitably adopt, although it involves a little anticipation of the period which our literary history will next take up. "In following the line of our writers, both in verse and prose, Sweet; sote or soote usually printed in Chaucer. 5 Arbours. • Conduit; fountain. 8 Waves. 10 Laurel; French. 13 An obscure line. 11 Wire. 7 Modern, gurgling. Even-song; the last or completing church-office of the day. 15 Alcestis; doubtful mythology. 17 Salute; see Chaucer. 18 Warbles, warblings. 16 Star. 18 20 Titan, the sun. Unknown, unusual, strange. 21 Caught. 22 Trap we find the old obsolete English to have gone out of use about the accession of Edward the Fourth. Lydgate and Bishop Peacock, especially the latter, are not easily understood by a reader not habituated to their language: he requires a glossary, or must help himsel out by conjecture. In the Paston Letters, on the contrary, in Harding the metrical chronicler, or in Sir John Fortescue's discourse on the difference between an absolute and a limited monarchy, he finds scarce any difficulty: antiquated words and forms of termination frequently occur; but he is hardly sensible that he reads these books much less fluently than those of modern times. These were written about 1470. "But in Sir Thomas More's History of Edward the Fifth, written about 1509, or in the beautiful ballad of The Nut-brown Maid, which we cannot place very far from the year 1500, there is not only a diminution of obsolete phraseology, but a certain modern turn and structure, both in the verse and prose, which denotes the commencement of a new era, and the establishment of new rules of taste in polite literature. Every one will understand, that a broad line cannot be traced for the beginning of this change. Hawes, though his English is very different from that of Lydgate, seems to have had a great veneration for him, and has imitated the manner of that school to which, in a marshalling of our poets, he unquestionably belongs. Skelton, on the contrary, though ready enough to coin words, has comparatively few that are obsolete."* From the part of the fifteenth century whose language has thus been decribed, we may be content with one short specimen of familiar Prose. It is taken from a curious collection of Letters and other papers, relating to the affairs of a family in Norfolk during the latter half of the century. Our extract is from a letter of the year 1459, in which the writer speaks of the studies of his brother. The old spelling is discarded in our copy; that the modern cast of phrase and arrangement may the more readily be perceived.t "Worshipful Sir, and my full special good master, after humble recommendation, please it you to understand, that such service as I can do to your pleasure, as to mine understanding, I have showed my diligence now this short season since your departing. * * Item, Sir, I may say to you, that William hath gone to school, to a Lombard called Karoll Giles, to learn and to be read in poetry, or else in French. For he hath beer * Hallam: Introduction to the Literature of Europe. with the same Karoll every day two times or three, and hath bought divers books of him; for the which, as I suppose, he hath put himself in danger* to the same Karoll. I made a motion to William to have known part of his business: and he answered and said, that he would be as glad and as fain of a good book of French or of poetry, as my master Sir John Fastolf would be to purchase a fair manor: and thereby I understand he list not to be communed withal in such matters." THE LANGUAGE OF SCOTLAND. 12. The history of the transformations suffered by the AngloSaxon tongue is not complete, till we have marked its fate in Scotland. How a language substantially the same with that of the English Teutons came to be currently spoken in the Scottish Lowlands to the North of the Frith of Forth, is one of those questions in our national annals, to which no answer has been made that is in any view satisfactory. If the old historians have reported to us every thing that really happened, the Anglo-Saxon settlements did not extend into those provinces, or a very little way, if at all. The difficulty is greatest, if we believe that the Picts, who are named as their early inhabitants, were a Celtic race. But it is not by any means removed by the theory, which has been made very probable, that our Pictish ancestors were really Goths. If they were so, they must have been separated from the main stock at a period so far distant, that it could not but have been difficult for their language to pass into any of the Gothic dialects that were transported from the continent in the fifth century. One is tempted, therefore, to regard with some favour the opinion, that the Danes or other Northmen, especially the Norwegians, were the planters of a Gothic speech in the North. If their piratical expeditions are the only facts to be founded on, the solution is plainly insufficient. Such incursions, though leaving a stray colony here and there, could not well have changed the language of a whole people. Lately, however, the clue to the labyrinth has ingeniously been sought in the curious fact, already known but overlooked, that, for thirty years in the eleventh century, a Norwegian kingdom was actually and regularly maintained in the East of Scotland. The Norse population which may be conjectured to have then been introduced, is alleged to have been, with the occasional infusions of the same blood, the kernel of the race now inhabiting the eastern counties northward of the Lothians: * In danger, i. e. in debt; so used by Shakspeare, and later. |